The First Journey

by K. A. Applegate

The hyena morph roars to life — a creature bound by one instinct: To kill.

  The K-9 dogs take off. They are just a streak of fur. You watch them, considering the chase. But you smell better prey.

  “What the —” The policeman turns, sees you, and leaps into the van. Locks the door and reaches for a gun.

  You note this, but you don’t care. It just doesn’t interest you. You lope away, down the path toward the snack bar. People scatter, small prey that you consider. But you smell something better.

  The primitive urge to have meat is so strong that you can’t fight it. You forget your name and who you are. You pick up the pace as the scent of prey grows stronger.

  Stop! Your mind screams the word. You’re human! You don’t kill!

  But the hyena is ruthless and fearless, and doesn’t stop.

  You hear a loud noise. A siren. People are screaming. Workers are rushing toward you, then stopping. One of them has a net.

  You hunker down. You’re cornered now. You’ll have to go for the closest prey.

  Small prey. Light hair grows out of the head. One of the species’s young. She wanders away from her mother. Good.

  It’s a child! It’s a little girl! No!

  You can’t fight it! You feel the hyena’s killing instinct, and you struggle. The workers are closing in with the net. One of them carries a tranquilizer gun. He is trying to get clear to aim.

  The prey toddles toward you. The mother screams. You feel the short hind legs of the hyena contract. The muscles tense. The powerful jaw opens and you let out that inhuman cry. ERRRR-UP!

  It silence everyone. They all fear you. You own this place. This prey is yours.

  No!

  With a last, desperate struggle, you take over the hyena instinct. You turn toward the worker with the gun.

  You feel the burning sensation, and immediately, your legs feel heavy. Slowly, you slump to the ground.

  Sting! You’re knocked out. When you awake, you will have to deal with the horror of being permanently stuck in hyena morph, a creature without mercy, a killing machine.

  You couldn’t control the hyena instinct in time. Bad morph!

  You reach out and touch the K-9 dog Princie’s coat. The dog closes his eyes. You concentrate.

  The police have their backs to you. It’s now or never. There’s that strange sensation again, of bones crunching, things growing that shouldn’t be growing. You touch your ears and feel fur. You suddenly drop down on all fours and notice that you have paws instead of hands and feet.

  And the smell! You smell everything! Food! People! Animals! It’s overwhelming at first. The other dogs cock their heads and look at you curiously. The one called Princie smells you and howls. After all, she’s smelling herself.

  The two policemen look over.

  “Hey, Seidel,” the taller one says. “Thought you only brought two dogs.”

  “Must have loaded a third — hey! The kid is missing!”

  They rush over. You stand alert, tail twitching, like the other dogs. You’re not just a dog. You’re a cop. You have discipline.

  It’s a good morph, you tell yourself. In a minute, they’ll give up on a harmless kid who stuck a toe in the wrong habitat. Big deal. It’s not like you’re a big bad criminal. They’ll load you into the van, take you back to the station, and you can take off from there.

  “This isn’t good, Finley,” Seidel says.

  “We’re supposed to be on alert,” Finley answers, frowning. “Especially for kids.”

  Especially for kids?

  “Wait, here’s a shoe.” One of them has spied your sneaker! “The dogs can track the kid.”

  He holds the sneaker under your nose. Scent roars in. Your scent. The other dogs smell, then strain at the leashes.

  “We’ll keep the one off-line, see what happens,” Finley says.

  The two dogs take off, and you follow, your nose to the ground, then in the air. Incredible. You can smell yourself. You can follow the air currents, know where you walked and stopped.

  The dogs follow your trail to the admission booth. They circle, and you do, too. Of course you know which way you went. You go in the opposite direction, but the other two take off down the sidewalk. Darn!

  You bound up behind them while the two cops hold the two leashes. Why didn’t you walk on the sidewalk? That would have confused the scent. Instead, you had stuck to the grassy part near the curb. The dog can smell your trail easily.

  “They’ve picked it up,” Seidel says. He sounds relieved. More relieved than he should sound, since he’s only tracking a kid.

  “Chapman says at least one of the kids infiltrated The Sharing meeting,” Finley says.

  The policemen are Controllers!

  And they’ll follow your scent straight to your house. To your family.

  “I reported that kid who was hanging around the dunes,” Seidel answers. “The others are going to pick her up. It won’t be long before she’s one of us.”

  Cassie. She was the one who’d hung out on the dunes, watching over Jake in his dog morph. Cassie was in danger! You have to warn her. Warn the others.

  The other dogs lose your scent. You almost lose it yourself. You’re in a more trafficked area of town now, near the Civic Center. Earlier, you had stopped at the center garage to leave a note on your mom’s car. You said you’d be late for dinner.

  Even later than you’d thought.

  You hurry past the garage, but the other dogs suddenly pick up your scent. They race into the garage. The cops follow, running after them.

  “This isn’t good!” Seidel says in a low voice. You pick up his words easily with your dog hearing.

  “Visser Three won’t like it,” Finley says in a worried tone.

  “So we won’t tell him.”

  The dogs lose the scent amid the oil stains and gasoline. They circle around, confused. But any minute they could find your mom’s car. The note you left still might be tucked under the windshield wiper. It wouldn’t take the cops long to figure out who you are. This is your only chance.

  You leap forward, barking, as if you’ve picked up the scent. You charge out of the garage. The other dogs follow. You know that you can’t lead them completely astray, so you follow the route back to your neighborhood.

  You run flat out now, so that the others have trouble keeping up with you. But you make sure they keep you in sight.

  You get to the Ferret Lady’s house and bark furiously outside. You circle the house and find the pet door. You nose it open and bound inside.

  The cops catch up and pound on the door. The Ferret Lady answers it. But already, you’ve caused a commotion. The ferrets are running crazily over the furniture. The cat is hissing and spitting. The other dogs add to the chaos.

  “What is it?” the Ferret Lady shouts over the din.

  “We’re chasing a kid!” The cops try to describe you.

  “Sounds like every kid in this neighborhood,” the Ferret Lady sniffs. “I don’t care if Visser Three himself asks me, I’ll say the same.”

  So far, so good. You’ve confused them. Under cover of the chaos, you sneak out the pet door again. You bound next door. You remember leaving a sweatshirt outside after gardening chores this morning. You grab it in your mouth and race off.

  You take that sweatshirt all over the neighborhood, rubbing it against trees and sidewalks and grass. Soon, you see the cops and the K-9 dogs again. The dogs are barking, running from place to place while the cops strain to hold on to the leashes.

  You keep hidden and watch the cops get thoroughly confused. They give up, and you trot back home. Time is almost up.

  You morph back into human form in your garage. You hurry inside to call Cassie. But everyone has left already. If you rush to the school now, you could blow their cover.

  There’s got to be another way.

  Good morph choice! You deserve to proceed. Go to chapter 12.

  The giraffe morph is the strangest ever. Your legs suddenly shoot up, your
bones extending so far you think they’ll crack. Your neck lengthens, and you think your head will fall right off. Then your skin becomes leathery and spotted. That’s kind of cool.

  You like being a giraffe. You can see over everyone’s heads. And boy, do your senses get a jolt. Suddenly, you can really smell for the first time. It’s as though you can smell a color. You smell green, and you picture the tender leaves of the tree nearby. A good snack, you think. But it’s easy to deflect the giraffe mind. You’ve got to get out of here.

  And boy, can you see. Your vision is clearer and sharper, and you spot an employee’s exit over the trees. All you have to do is turn right at the corner of the path and keep going. You move forward delicately, like a dancer.

  “Hey! It’s a giraffe!”

  People point at you. Oops. You kind of forgot about them down there. They seem puny, and they aren’t predators. But you know that animal handlers will be coming for you with tranquilizer guns.

  You quicken your pace. A giraffe can really move if it has to. But you see them, running full tilt toward you. Two of them have tranquilizer guns.

  You leap over a wall. It’s so easy, since your legs are so long! You find yourself in a savannah habitat. That’s good. You start across, hoping to make it to the other wall. If you can get over it, the exit is just steps away.

  Then, you hear the roar. You’ve leaped into the lion’s den. Both your giraffe instincts and a book you vaguely remember called Those Amazing Animals of Africa suddenly remind you that lions are the main predators of giraffes.

  A full-grown male lion springs.

  Bad morph! You just turned into a tasty lunch. Return to the end of chapter 8 and choose again.

  It’s getting late, and you’re freaked. Cassie is in danger. Should you head over to school to try to hook up with the others? You can’t stay here while the other Animorphs put their lives on the line.

  There’s a suspicion that’s been nagging at you. During the chase, the policemen looked very nervous at the parking garage. They muttered about Visser Three. What if something strange is going on there?

  It’s only a little bit out of your way, so you decide to investigate the garage before heading to school. The garage is used during the day for city government workers. Right now, it’s pretty deserted except for a security guard. You duck behind a car and wait until he heads down the ramp toward the entrance.

  You’re about to explore when you see the guard wave in a large black van with tinted windows. Curious, you watch as the van heads up the ramp.

  Instead of parking, the van pulls up directly in front of the elevators. A group of people get out. You recognize Jake’s brother, Tom. Controllers!

  Someone pushes a button to summon the elevator. You know you have to follow the group, but you can’t stay in human form. Tom would recognize you. You have to try a morph. But what should you choose?

  You have to make a decision fast. You choose:

  To use your ferret morph. Go to chapter 13.

  To use your K-9 German shepherd morph. Go to chapter 15.

  You are concealed in a dark corner of the garage. You feel the ground rush up at you as your bones compress. Hair grows on your hands, on your face. Your nose twitches. Your body becomes sleek, and the ferret mind urges you to play. There are so many things to investigate in the garage! Wonderful smells, things to eat.

  You wrench your ferret brain under control. Keeping to the wall, you get close to the group. The elevator dings, and the first group crowds on. You slink closer.

  Do you dare risk boarding the elevator? The lights on the elevator are bright, and you’ll probably be noticed. Normally, humans would scream if they saw a furry creature in a small space with them. But you have a feeling Controllers wouldn’t care.

  And besides, you have no choice.

  You slink in between the legs of the Controllers and head for the corner. The doors close.

  “We have company,” one of the Controllers says. They all look down.

  “It’s not a cat,” someone says.

  “It’s not a dog,” someone else observes.

  The Controller who seems to be in charge turns and gives you a dismissive glance. “Catch it. I’ll throw it down the shaft.”

  Busted! You can’t react, or they’ll suspect something.

  “Wait,” Tom says. “I’ve seen that animal. It’s a ferret. Belongs to Humphries. Maybe we shouldn’t touch it. Chapman said to take no chances.”

  “All right.” The other Controller turns back, already bored with the conversation.

  You’re safe — for now.

  The elevator indicator lights up the sublevel floor. It’s as far down as the parking garage goes. But the Controller hits a series of buttons, and the elevator doesn’t stop. It keeps going down!

  The door opens onto a room that seems carved out of dirt and rock. Sheetrock is nailed up against the walls. You slink out of the elevator and follow the group into a concealed door that leads to an iron staircase.

  You go down, down, down. Your eyes adjust to the light, and your nose picks up the smell of dampness. You hear something, a comforting sound that reassures you for a moment. Like waves against a shore.

  But then you hear the screams. Human cries of anguish. Suffering. And you pick up a horrifyingly familiar smell. Taxxons.

  You don’t want to see what’s ahead. You don’t want to move. Dread fills you. It’s so much more enormous than being afraid of a test, or the dentist.

  You’ve only hesitated a moment, but the Controllers have disappeared around a turn. You dart forward.

  The first thing you get hit with is how huge the space is. It’s maybe three times the size of the mall. And it’s all completely open, and carved out of rock and earth. There are still enormous pieces of earthmoving equipment down there, as though the space is constantly being expanded. You notice other staircases winding up and disappearing. There must be secret entrances all over town! The Yeerks are much more numerous than any of you imagined.

  Then you notice the cages. They are filled with humans and Hork-Bajir. Women, children, men. Some of them are screaming. Some of them just sit numbly. Taxxons and Hork-Bajir patrol outside the cages. Occasionally, one of the Hork-Bajir lashes out with a tail blade and rattles the cage. The humans shrink back, and the Yeerk-controlled Hork-Bajir let out these huffing sounds that must be laughter.

  As you watch, one of the Hork-Bajir opens a cage and leads out a woman. She struggles, and the Hork-Bajir casually holds a bladed wrist to her throat. You have no doubt he would slash her in a second. The Hork-Bajir leads her onto a pier. It goes out over a pool that looks as though it’s filled with moving sludge. He forces her head under the surface. When he jerks her head back up, you see a gray, slimy thing finish slithering inside her ear. The woman doesn’t struggle anymore.

  And then you see Tom again. His head is bent over the pool. The same slimy thing slides out of his ear.

  Immediately, he begins to scream. You can’t hear the words, but you can imagine. The Hork-Bajir puts a blade to his throat. It takes three of them to get him to a cage and throw him inside.

  You feel sick. Sick to your bones. You can’t fight this. You should turn around and go back up while you can. Wait to fight another day.

  Because it’s hopeless. You didn’t think it was possible. But you want to give up.

  Then you see Cassie. She’s being held with the other humans. Waiting for a Yeerk slime to invade her brain. Guarding her are two Hork-Bajir and a Taxxon.

  It’s still hopeless. But rage fills you and sends your blood pounding, and you’re ready to fight.

  You scamper down the steps. No one notices you as you dart across the floor. You look like a mole, or another creature of the underground. A breeze tickles your fur and whiskers.

  A breeze? Down here?

  You look up. A hawk has just flown over your head. It circles the air above Cassie.

 

 


 

  Tobias answers.

 

  You scurry across the floor toward the others.

  you call in thought-speak.

 

  Marco almost jumps to the ceiling. “Why did you have to pick a rat?” he whispers.

 

  “Great,” Marco mutters. “A rodent who pretends to be a dog. Just what we need.”

  you add.

  Jake bends down to speak to you. “If I were you, I’d morph back to human. You might need a better morph than ferret. This place is crawling with Taxxons and Hork-Bajir.”

  you say.

  “I saw him,” Jake says tersely. His face tells you everything. You can’t imagine how awful it must be to see your brother like that.

  You scurry behind a storage shed. Quickly, you morph back to human.

  Rachel pokes her head around the shed. “You’d better stay here. You need to gather your strength if you’re going to morph again. We’ll come back when it’s time.”

  You lean against the storage shed and close your eyes. You concentrate on slow breathing, gathering your strength for the next morph.

  It’s not long before the others return. But they’ve been spotted.

  “What are you doing back there?”

  It’s a human-Controller! Standing next to him is a Hork-Bajir, blade arms at the ready. A Taxxon stands on the other side, his spidery legs twitching, red Jell-O eyes glowing.

  Suddenly, you notice someone behind the guards. Rachel. Only it’s Rachel with a long, long nose. A trunk. She’s morphing into an elephant! A braying noise fills the air as Rachel feels the elephant’s power.

  She impales a Hork-Bajir on one tusk and steps on a Taxxon as though it were a spider. The human-Controller runs away.